Posts Tagged ‘Avraham Fried’

As a unique show of thanks to IDF soldiers, the Haredi superstar Yaakov Shwekey performed on Wednesday, January 2, in front of thousands of fans at Tel Aviv’s Nokia stadium in Yad Eliyahu, on a special night honoring IDF soldiers.

“I’ve come to sing here tonight to show my gratitude to all the Israeli soldiers who work so hard to defend the Jewish state,” Shwekey told the audience.

Shwekey also sang a new song that he composed especially to thank the for the soldiers for all that they do to make the country safe.

Shwekey’s most famous song is Rachem, composed by Pinky Weber. The lyrics are from the grace after the meal, asking God to have mercy on the Jewish nation and the city of Jerusalem. Shwekey described this song: “It’s a prayer. It’s not just a song. We connect with God and ask Him to have mercy.”

Back in August, 2007, Shwekey and singer Avraham Fried were scheduled to perform together in Jerusalem, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the reunification of the city. Leading Haredi Rabbis signed forbidding participation in the event. Yaakov responded saying that he had permission from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and both Shwekey and Fried went on to perform at the concert.

The 29th Annual South Florida Chassidic Chanukah Festival is scheduled for the last night of Chanukah, Sunday, December 28, at the Gulfstream Theatre, Hallandale Beach Blvd. and US 1, in Hallandale Beach; at 7:00 p.m. Performing at what is traditionally the world’s largest Chanukah event will be child prodigy Ethan Bortnick and the king of Jewish music, Avraham Fried.

The festival is a project of Chabad of South Broward. The gala will feature the lighting of Florida’s largest menorah. Kosher food will be available. The entertainment promises to be superb.

World-famous singer, Avraham Fried, has performed for 10 years at the Florida Chanukah Festival and has entertained audiences all over the world for 28 years. His presence will not only attract Floridians, but thousands of Northerners vacationing in Florida December 28.

Also performing will be seven-year old Ethan Bortnick, a pianist, composer and world-class entertainer. He plays over 200 songs from memory and can play both by ear and by reading notes. Ethan composed over 30 songs and pieces of music that are being published. He plays classical, jazz, pop, folk and children’s music.

Ethan Bortnick

Ethan has appeared on many popular televisions shows and has performed live and televised concerts. He has performed in and led symphony orchestras and has shared the stage with many famous musicians and performers. He has raised record amounts for children’s charities.

Admission to the festival is free, but this year, in addition to VIP seats, a section of box seats will be available to the general public for $25.

According to Rabbi Levi Tennenhaus, Chabad’s program director, “This year we’ve arranged a different, bigger and better venue to accommodate a larger crowd. VIP and box seats are very limited, so book reserved seats as soon as possible.” VIP and box seats are only available in advance.

Rabbi Raphael Tennenhaus, Chabad’s executive- vice-president, says that Chabad’s response to terror is to add light. “The story of Chanukah and the message in the flames of the Menorah, is that darkness, evil and terror can be eradicated with light, goodness and random acts of kindness.”

This year’s event will be dedicated to Rabbi and Mrs. Gavriel Holzberg, Hy”d, and the other victims of the terror attacks, Hy”d, in Mumbai, India. Rabbi and Mrs. Holzberg were the co-directors of Chabad-Lubavitch in Mumbai. Their two-year-old son, Moishy, was bravely and miraculously saved by his nanny, Sandra Samuel.

The 29th Annual South Florida Chassidic Chanukah Festival is scheduled for the last night of Chanukah, Sunday, December 28, at the Gulfstream Theatre, Hallandale Beach Blvd. and US 1, in Hallandale Beach; at 7:00 p.m. Performing at what is traditionally the world’s largest Chanukah event will be child prodigy Ethan Bortnick and the king of Jewish music, Avraham Fried.

The festival is a project of Chabad of South Broward. The gala will feature the lighting of Florida’s largest menorah. Kosher food will be available. The entertainment promises to be superb.

World-famous singer, Avraham Fried, has performed for 10 years at the Florida Chanukah Festival and has entertained audiences all over the world for 28 years. His presence will not only attract Floridians, but thousands of Northerners vacationing in Florida December 28.

Also performing will be seven-year old Ethan Bortnick, a pianist, composer and world-class entertainer. He plays over 200 songs from memory and can play both by ear and by reading notes. Ethan composed over 30 songs and pieces of music that are being published. He plays classical, jazz, pop, folk and children’s music.

Ethan Bortnick

Ethan has appeared on many popular televisions shows and has performed live and televised concerts. He has performed in and led symphony orchestras and has shared the stage with many famous musicians and performers. He has raised record amounts for children’s charities.

Admission to the festival is free, but this year, in addition to VIP seats, a section of box seats will be available to the general public for $25.

According to Rabbi Levi Tennenhaus, Chabad’s program director, “This year we’ve arranged a different, bigger and better venue to accommodate a larger crowd. VIP and box seats are very limited, so book reserved seats as soon as possible.” VIP and box seats are only available in advance.

Rabbi Raphael Tennenhaus, Chabad’s executive- vice-president, says that Chabad’s response to terror is to add light. “The story of Chanukah and the message in the flames of the Menorah, is that darkness, evil and terror can be eradicated with light, goodness and random acts of kindness.”

This year’s event will be dedicated to Rabbi and Mrs. Gavriel Holzberg, Hy”d, and the other victims of the terror attacks, Hy”d, in Mumbai, India. Rabbi and Mrs. Holzberg were the co-directors of Chabad-Lubavitch in Mumbai. Their two-year-old son, Moishy, was bravely and miraculously saved by his nanny, Sandra Samuel.

The 29th Annual South Florida Chassidic Chanukah Festival is set for the last night of Chanukah, Sunday December 28, at the Gulfstream Theatre Hallandale Beach Blvd. and US 1, in Hallandale Beach, at 7 p.m. Featured at, what is traditionally the worlds’ largest Chanukah event, will be child prodigy Ethan Bortnick and the king of Jewish music, Avraham Fried. The Festival is a project of Chabad of South Broward.

Ethan Bortnick is a pianist, composer and world-class entertainer who passionately enjoys entertaining. He plays over 200 songs from memory and can play both by ear and reading notes.

Ethan composed over 30 songs/pieces of music that are being published. Ethan plays classical, jazz, pop, folk and children’s music.

Ethan has appeared on “Oprah,” ” The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Good Morning America,” “Martha Stewart,” NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS and many more national and international programs.

He has performed both live and televised concerts, both national and international. His range of music is remarkable, as he has performed and led symphony orchestras and opened at the kick-off show for Nelly Furtado’s recent tour. He has shared the stage with musicians such as Beyonce, Josh Groban, Santana, Natalie Cole, Wyclef Jean, Smokey Robinson, Gloria Gaynor, Patti Labelle, The pointer Sisters and many more. Ethan recorded music for Disney’s Little Einsteins and has appeared on both Disney and Nickelodeon. Ethan has performed multiple times for live audiences of over 20,000 people. And the list goes on.

Ethan has raised record amounts for children’s charities and recently raised $12,000,000 for Miami Children’s Hospital, where they saved his little brother with 2 heart surgeries. He also recently co-hosted the Chabad Telethon raising over $8,000,000 for the charity and getting a worldwide viewership of over 20,000,000 viewers on this live TV program. He performed at last year’s Chanukah Festival in Hallandale Beach attended by 10,000 people.

Ethan’s accomplishments are comparable to those of well-known established musicians and entertainers, but . . . he’s only 7 Years old!

Avraham Fried has performed for 10 years at the Florida Chanukah Festival, and his presence will not only attract Floridians but thousands of Northerners who will be vacationing in Florida on December 28.

Admission to the Festival is free, but this year, in addition to VIP seats, a section of box seats will be available to the general public for $25.

According to Rabbi Levi Tennenhaus, Chabad’s program director, “This year we’ve arranged a different, bigger and better venue than last year, within Gulfstream, to accommodate a larger crowd. VIP and box seats are very limited, so I suggest that whoever is interested, should book reserved seats as soon as possible.” VIP and box seats are only available in advance.

Since the news broke more than a week ago about the arrest by the FBI of a frum, heimishe man in my hometown of Monsey for allegedly doing unspeakable things repeatedly to a girl/young woman closely related to him over a period of many years and spanning three countries, people have been asking me the same question again and again – “Could this possibly be true?”

To all worried parents and community members asking this question, my unequivocal answer is “yes.”

I do not know any specifics about this particularly ghoulish tale other than what I read in the secular press and by reviewing a hair-raising copy of the federal indictment (which is available online). Thus I cannot comment on the veracity of the charges. Additionally, the accused individual has not yet had his day in court. But I have heard far more than one or two stories like this one in the past from credible people. (For the record, I always ask the victims to go straight to the police and report the abusers.)

So even if this story is not true – and it is beyond naïve to think that federal agents would convene a grand jury and make an arrest like this merely on the say-so of a vindictive family member without substantive forensic proof – the terribly sad fact is that it most certainly could be true.

It is exactly these types of horrible stories that I was referring to in the opening lines of my column in this space a month ago, titled “L’ma’an Hashem: What Will It Take?” Here are the first two sentences of that column: “It is difficult to describe the sickening, gut-wrenching sensation I experience when I get phone calls from parents whose children were abused or from adults who have carried the horrible scars of childhood abuse for decades, often shredding their relationships and ruining their lives. And I am sad to report that those calls are getting more frequent as time goes on.”

If your children are married and out of your home, feel free to join those who blame these stories on “anti-Semitic, secular newspapers,” and “self-hating Jews who love to bash haredim.” Or you can join those who would rather stay clueless and say things like, “Wow, did you hear that story? Please pass the salt.” You can also trust the people who tell you not to worry about this since there are only an infinitesimal number of frum pedophiles.

But if you are a parent still entrusted with the care of your children, please read the non-airbrushed story in the secular newspapers and be frightened. Very, very frightened!

I suggest that you develop a mental image of a deranged frum adult walking around your neighborhood with pruning shears viciously cutting off the index fingers of any children that he can get his hands on. Then imagine seeing hundreds of frum kids walking around with bloody bandages around their hands – while the unhinged fellow with the shears calmly strolls around unimpeded. Are you sufficiently terrified now? Well, that is a tamed-down version of how I see things as far as the abuse/molestation issue is concerned. Because these evil monsters that molest our innocent children and the soulless, immoral people who cover for them are cutting out the very souls of the poor kids whose lives they ruin.

This incident proves what I have written about numerous times in the past – that this is not only a school issue but also a communal one. It is also one that can be dramatically improved with awareness and Torah-appropriate education of parents and children. My friends, all the finger- pointing and blame games won’t save the life of a single child. So let’s please not focus our energies right now on discussing who is responsible for this mess, as it will distract us from what we need to do in order to protect the children that Hashem entrusted to our care.

I am beyond heartbroken that not enough people in our community have the courage to discuss this life-threatening, colossal threat to our children, and that we keep allowing ourselves to get distracted by the meaningless and often silly non-issues raised by self-appointed “askanim.” Instead, we must concentrate on the safety of our children. I am also stunned that our communal anger is perpetually deflected from the predators and those who cover for them, and directed at those who courageously try to improve things.

All I can do is beg parents b’chol lashon shel bakasha to take this issue seriously and start speaking to their children about privacy and personal safety issues. L’ma’an Hashem, parents, please start protecting each and every child of yours as if his or her very life depends on it.
Because it does!

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz is the founder and dean of Yeshiva Darchei Noam of Monsey, and the founder and director of Project Y.E.S.

On Sunday, October 26, Project Y.E.S. is running its first major fundraising event – a concert in The Jazz at New York City’s Lincoln Center. The concert will feature Avraham Fried and Chazzan Yitzchak Meir Helfgot. Please visit www.rabbihorowitz.com, e-mail admin@rabbihorowitz.com or call 718-758-3131 x 106 for more information about the concert, to become a sponsor, and to purchase tickets.

The first column I ever wrote was published in the May 1996 issue of The Jewish Observer. My topic, underachieving children and the increased rate of dropouts of boys and girls from our community, was not discussed in polite company at that time.

When I submitted the 4,500-word essay, I honestly had no idea of the impact it would have and the firestorm it would ignite. But I soon discovered the incredible power of the written word. In the first month after the column was published, my wife and I received more than 300 phone calls at home from Jewish parents around the world. Some complimented or critiqued what I had written, but the vast majority of them were just begging for relief from the searing agony they and their at-risk children were experiencing. Clearly a raw nerve had been touched. Soon, I was invited to address the national conventions of both Torah Umesorah and Agudath Israel on the issue of teens at risk. Over the following months, I wrote several follow-up columns on this topic – all of which can now be found on my website.

In September 1997, I requested a meeting with Rabbi Moshe Sherer, the late, dynamic president of Agudath Israel, to explore the possibility of harnessing the resources of Agudah to address this issue. At that time, he was well past retirement age, and was silently battling the ravages of the illness that would shortly take his life. It would have been well within his right to take an extended leave of absence and disconnect his phone. But his dedication to klal Yisrael did not permit him to do so. He took the time to meet with me and took an active role in the founding and growth of Project Y.E.S. over the following months – almost until the week of his petirah.

Project Y.E.S. is special because it evolves with the changing needs of our children. While one-on-one mentoring was an adequate response toward prevention of the at-risk phenomena, much more is needed today.

In 1996, with the encouragement of our gedolim, we began offering jobs to out-of-school teens. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that many of the children simply did not have the skills to hold down a job. So we changed our model to incorporate career counseling and aptitude testing, along with the job placement. In 1999 we developed a professional, all-volunteer teen-mentoring program, utilizing the best practices of several agencies with successful mentoring programs – among them Big Brother/Big Sister of NYC. This has quite literally changed the lives of hundreds of children in our communities, and, according to our teen mentors, improved their own parenting skills as well. The key component of this program is the training and ongoing supervision that our volunteers receive from our experienced mental health professionals.

Over time, we soon came to realize that the parents of at-risk children have as great a need for a “lifeline” as their children. In 2002, using the experience we had gained in the mentoring program, we developed our parent/mentoring program, which provides highly trained volunteers to be one-on-two coaches to parents for a 12-week period. This results in the improvement of the parent/child relationships in hundreds of homes.

In 2005, responding to many requests from parents and educators across North America, we introduced our KESHER School Program. This program provides an on-site clinician to each enrolled school, working exclusively with the teachers and administration – one-on-one – to effectively manage challenged students within the mainstream classroom. In a relatively short time, our KESHER program has added an entirely new dimension to the children’s school experience in more than 25 schools in four states – having already served almost 10,000 children.

We are now exploring diverse and creative uses of the Internet to all who turn to us for help. We have already created:

*An online referral database of all Orthodox private therapists, services and agencies that offer assistance to parents of at-risk teens: The goal is to improve the children’s quality of life and educational success.

*An online registry of all mainstream and alternative yeshiva schools in the U.S. and Israel: You can learn the particulars about any school and share your comments and personal experiences with that school in order to help others in the future.

Additionally, we are now expanding our Internet “People Helping People” program of dynamic parent forums. This allows our participants to pose parenting questions to professionals and lay experts, who bring a broad range of life experiences to our communal discussion.

We are also actively exploring the development of a new “kid-friendly” teen site, where Jewish teens can safely and confidentially interact with volunteers and professionals. Our goal here is for the teens to be provided with sound guidance when seeking our help.

Please take the time now to reserve your seats for Project Y.E.S.’s gala concert – taking place on Sunday, October26 at The Jazz at Lincoln Center. Our first major fundraising event, featuring Avraham Fried and Chazzan Yitzchak Helfgot, will help us continue our lifesaving work. For more information, please visit my website, www.rabbihorowitz.com, e-mail admin@rabbihorowitz.com, or call 718-758-3131 x106.